Yearly Personal Information Purge

Each year I try to do a personal check up on, not only my own, but also family members information that is published online. The thing is, I usually keep this information private and don't share, because of one reason or another. This year, I don't think it matters, my information and my family information has been stolen so many times, and shared for free and publicly available, it's probably all over the "Dark Web" as well, I'm sure. Anyway, I figured I would take a few minutes and share with the masses who are not aware of their information being shared, this includes your address, cell phone, home phone (for those that still have one), and many times one of the sites list your family members. Although, at times this effort seems futile, it provides me with at least some comfort that my information is absent from some sites and no longer easily available for free to anyone in the public. If I can make it harder for someone to exploit me or a member of my family, it's at least worth the effort. Here is the quick info to removing information from a few sites, if you have more sites that provide information for free please post, so that the masses, selfishly me, can remove personal information from the web and add a layer of protection.

Let's start off with Family Tree Now.

This site could contain your current address, previous addresses for you and gives you the clickable information for your family members as well. Again, all of this information can be compiled to either target you or your family or steal your information. It's just easier to remove it and taking away the possibility of someone you don't want finding you, finding you! I will say that when you explore the site to find where to remove your information, it's not easily apparent how do that, so to assist you with that, here is the link.

Okay, now that the family tree now information is removed, let's take a look at a recent website that was shown to me that is even scarier. This site contains a method to look up names, addresses, phone numbers and even email addresses. This is scary in that it listed my personal cell phone, until I had it removed, of course, and information that you just don't want people having access to, in my personal opinion. This site is great for research, as many people don't remove their information and if you are looking for that long lost high school friend, you will find them here, however, my hope is that those of you out there who read this will remove your information and add even a little layer of protection to your personal information.

I will say that this site is easier to remove your information, there is a link at the bottom that says, "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" that you can click on and have your information removed. I would imagine as the site gets popular, they could make opting out a little more difficult. So, just in case here is that link.

Now the challenge becomes, do you use your personal email to have your information removed or not? I don't want to provide my personal email address. That is no problem! Take a minute and you can Google many email services that provide temporary emails, but I found one recently that is far and above what I needed. An email valid for 10 minutes. No logging in, no remembering the password, just keep the page open and you can check for your information removal emails right there on the screen and in ten minutes, the email is gone and your information is removed. I wish I would have thought of this and I'm sure that there is some evil lurking somewhere, but the one time I tested it, it worked flawlessly. Side note here, after seeing the site, it does make you think about other cyber criminals and how they can use this for spam purposes, not this one, but something like it, of course. That maybe a topic for another day. So, here it is, the 10 minute email link.

Now, I know that there are many sites that contain my information, many sites that I cannot remove my information from, because I don't know where they are, but I figured I would take a few minutes at the beginning of this year and share with you some personal information hygiene. Do with this information what you want and if you decide to use the information or like I mentioned if you know of another site that has my or anyone else's information freely available, please let us all know. A single step toward a more private and secure life is better than no step at all. I wish you all the best this year!